Branch Three of the Razavi Khorasan Province Court of Appeals has upheld the seven and a half year prison sentence of former Kurdish political prisoner Sakineh Parvaneh.
Parvaneh was deprived of legal representation during her arrest and subsequent trial, the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) has learned.
On 31 October, the political prisoner was summoned to the Enforcement of Judgements Office in Mashhad Prison, where she is currently being held, and was informed of the verdict.
This Kurdish political prisoner was sentenced to a total of seven years and six months imprisonment by Branch One of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Mashhad in early October on charges of “propaganda against the state”, “assembly and collusion” and “insulting the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran”.
The court and the Intelligence Organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are said to have cited a video circulating on social media and in the media showing Parvaneh at the grave of Ali Mozaffari, a victim of the Jin Jiyan Azadi (Woman Life Freedom in Kurdish) uprising in Quchan, Razavi Khorasan Province, as evidence supporting the charges.
The court session, which took place in late August, was conducted without Parvaneh’s assigned lawyer present.
Despite an offer by a lawyer in Mashhad to represent Parvaneh, the judges of Branch One of the Revolutionary Court and Branch 35 of the Court of Appeals have denied the lawyer access to the case.
Furthermore, the prison authorities have reportedly blocked the lawyer’s telephone number from Parvaneh’s phone card, preventing her from contacting her lawyer.
Additionally, Parvaneh has been suffering from respiratory and heart problems but the authorities have refused to transfer her to the prison infirmary or a medical facility outside the prison for treatment.
Also, her telephone communication with family members has been restricted, allowing only brief and monitored conversations in Persian.
Parvaneh, who was released under amnesty from Mashhad Central Prison on 11 February, was arrested by the Intelligence Organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) at the Mashhad Bus Terminal on 4 April and taken to the military-security organisation’s detention centre.
The taxi driver who took Parvaneh to the terminal was also detained for several hours and severely beaten by IRGC intelligence agents.
After initial interrogations, the former political prisoner was transferred to Mashhad Central Prison on 14 April.
The former political prisoner was also arrested in Tehran on 7 March, nearly a month after her release under amnesty, but was released after four days.
The Intelligence Organisation of the IRGC has been refusing to return her personal documents, including her identity card.
Parvaneh had previously published a letter on 25 June 2020, describing her detention process and the harassment she had gone through during her imprisonment.
According to this letter, the security agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran arrested her in the early autumn of 2019 under the pretext of meeting her family in the city of Sulaimaniyah, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
After her arrest, said the letter, she was first taken to the Iran-Iraq border and held in the detention centres of Marivan and Sanandaj for 10 days and then taken to the Evin Prison of Tehran.
Parvaneh added that in Evin Prison, she was interrogated and physically tortured in wards A and 209 and the ward for women prisoners.
Parvaneh’s lawyer Payam Derafshan said on 25 May 2020 that his client had been sentenced to five years in prison and three years ban from membership in political groups on charges of “membership in groups or factions opposing the state with the aim of disrupting national security”.
In April 2020, Parvaneh was transferred from Evin Prison to Qarchak Prison in Varamin for writing and chanting slogans. After spending four days in solitary confinement in this prison, she was transferred to Aminabad Psychiatric Hospital in Rey.
The political prisoner was returned to Evin Prison on 4 July 2020 with bruises and beating marks on her body.
Later, a court sentenced Parvaneh to two years in prison in August 2020 on charges of “disrupting the prison order”.
In November 2020, the political prisoner was transferred from Evin Prison to Quchan and Mashhad prisons.
In addition, in the past two years, she was taken several times to the detention centre of the Intelligence Organisation of the IRGC in Mashhad and was subjected to physical and mental torture to make confessions on TV.
Parvaneh also went on hunger strikes several times to protest against the pressure of security agencies.
